Monday, 15 May 2017

"Ideological necrophilia" in Venezuela... and the Academy.

Moisés Naím got it spot on speaking to Fareed Zakaria's GPS show on CNN this morning: Chavez was and Maduro is in thrall to "ideological necrophilia". That is in passionate love with dead ideologies. In this case socialism. A very vivid phrase which nicely sums up the ideology crippling Venezuela.

As Naim says: it (socialism) had been tried over and over and always the result is the same: "poverty, inequality and corruption".

Yet the likes of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn still promote socialism. They ought to know better. And many university students, a distressingly large number, also want to crush capitalism and promote socialism. These kids don't know better because they've never experienced socialism (as I have in China of the 70s) and have been "educated" by hard-left of centre professors.

Still, they're deceived if they think socialism is the answer to capitalism's shortcomings. It's no more the answer than "Islam is the answer" (as it is according to islamists). Socialism and Islamism: They're both the ideas of ideological necrophiliacs.

"...it is the duty of those who have accepted Islam to strive unceasingly to convert or subjugate those who have not. This obligation is without limit of time or space. It must continue until the whole world has either accepted the Islamic faith or submitted to the power of the Islamic state."

-- Bernard Lewis, renowned historian of Islam and the Middle East, in The Political Language of Islam, p72-3.

In other words:

"Islam is unique among religions of the world in having a developed doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers."